The Chinese art world does not exist. In a society that restricts individual freedoms and violates human rights, anything that calls itself creative or independent is a pretence. It is impossible for a totalitarian society to create anything with passion and imagination.
I make no pretence at being well-versed in politics - it is all too often about personalities and emotion - but I do know a thing or two about our constitution, as I once trained to be a lawyer. Even a first-year law student learns that an overriding principle is that parliament is sovereign.
In all highly civilised communities Pretence is prominent, and sooner or later invades the regions of Literature.
In England, literary pretence is more universal than elsewhere from our method of education.
Sincerity is impossible, unless it pervade the whole being, and the pretence of it saps the very foundation of character.
The rise of Donald Trump established a new ground zero for liberal media, requiring no pretence of balance - better yet, with a kind of political brain haemorrhage, everybody seemed to have lost the ability to be balanced.